


By His Own Hands

by fullmetalheart



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Ouch, Suicide, bc atlus didnt tell us shit about akechi, bc he dies before he gets the chance for comfort, character study that is 90 percent headcanon, goro akechi and his series of unfortunate decisions, like seriously think about it, to be fair he did kill people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 12:24:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19463929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmetalheart/pseuds/fullmetalheart
Summary: Akechi found himself at Leblanc yet again, seated at his usual chair. Kurusu gave him a smile from where he worked behind the counter.He wanted to put his fingers around that neck and squeeze until Kurusu stopped breathing entirely.Robin Hood returned Kurusu’s smile with one of his own, while Loki seethed beneath his skin, waiting for the day he’d get to see the life drain from those gray eyes.In which Goro Akechi is the result of living in an incurable society with nothing but festering hatred.





	By His Own Hands

**Author's Note:**

> **tw: suicide, description of blood**
> 
> Please take care of yourselves.

Goro Akechi was eight years old when his mother died.

He woke to sunlight streaming into their small, dingy apartment as the sun rose. He blinked at the sudden brightness, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

He sat up and slid from his futon. His mother’s was empty. This didn’t alarm him. He knew she liked to disappear in the middle of the night.

Bare feet padded against a stained carpet. The light in the bathroom was on. Curious, he made his way to it.

He found his mother lying on the floor in a puddle of her blood.

For some reason, his mind did not register that this was a bad thing. He knew that was his mother, and he knew that was her blood, but his brain supplied him with no emotional response to this information.

“Mom?” he asked. His voice felt too loud in their quiet apartment. It echoed against the tile floor of the bathroom. He got no response. He hadn’t been expecting one.

Goro knew he was a smart kid. He got good grades on tests. He answered all the questions in class right. His mom had praised his report card, eyes bright as she looked at all of the A’s printed on the paper.

He understood that finding someone lying prone covered in blood meant that he should call the police.

He didn’t call the police.

He knelt down by his mother’s side. Some of her blood touched his knees. He registered this, but did not react.

He reached for his mother. The skin on the inside of her wrist gave way when he pressed his small fingers against it. He felt something warm and wet and sticky coat his fingers. It made him pause, and he pulled his hand away.

He watched as his mother’s blood dripped from his fingers to the palm of his hand, then from his palm to his wrist and down the rest of his arm. The red was vivid against his pale skin. For some reason that mesmerized him.

His knees began to ache.

He wiped his hand clean on his shirt and scooted backward until he sat with his back pressed against the wall.

He sat that way until his stomach growled with hunger. He wanted food, and he had no way to feed himself.

He left their apartment and knocked on his neighbor’s door.

They yelped in terror when they saw that he was covered in blood.

“We’re very sorry about your mother,” the policeman said.

Goro stared at them blankly. “What mother?”

The two policemen exchanged glances.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told them truthfully. He didn’t remember anything.

His eyes were empty. Numbness sat heavy in his chest.

He was still covered in her blood.

Goro Akechi was nine years old when he finally started to remember.

Recollection trickled in slowly. His mind supplied him with happy memories first.

He remembered dancing around their apartment, giggling as she twirled him around and around and around. His mother could not sing well, but the sound of her voice was better than anything he’d ever heard on the radio.

He remembered the figurines of superheroes she had bought him. They were cheap, and the paint was peeling off of them. She would play the villain, and he chased her around the kitchen. She would pretend to cower in defeat, vanquished by Goro, the ultimate superhero.

He remembered watching her paint her toes a sparkly hot pink. “Do me! Do me!” he had said. She had laughed and obliged. Her hands had been steady, but Goro squirmed so much that they got messed up anyway. She wasn’t upset at him. She just lunged forward and tickled him relentlessly. He had screeched in delight.

In the wake of these happy memories, something like loneliness began to bubble up beneath his sternum.

Other kids his age didn’t like him. They called him weird and spat at his feet. They were unnerved by the emptiness in his eyes.

Goro began to wonder where his mother had gone. He wondered why she had left him alone.

He missed her.

Goro Akechi was ten years old when the bad memories began to haunt him.

His mother had bad days. Days that were bad enough to have been a sign of her declining mental health, had Goro been old enough to notice.

There had been days where she would sob. Hours would go by, and she would lay curled up on her futon. She would cry and cry and cry. Goro could never understand why.

Other days she had been empty. Sometimes he would stare at himself in the mirror, and his eyes would be painfully familiar. He could remember her eyes, just a shade lighter than his, looking exactly the same.

Then there was the anger. She would rage around the apartment, cursing a name Goro still could not remember. She didn’t seem human. Her eyes were wild, and spittle would fly from her mouth. When the person who possessed the name she hated didn’t magically appear, she would turn her anger on Goro. She never raised a hand against him, but he could remember cowering away from her in fear, hands covering his ears as she screamed at him until her throat went raw.

These memories were a direct juxtaposition to the good ones. He could remember laying curled up in her lap, her hand carding through his hair, soft voice apologizing for her earlier behavior.

At age ten, Goro Akechi did not know whether he had loved or hated his mother. He supposed it didn’t matter, because he could remember the blood. She was dead, and she was not coming back to save him.

Goro Akechi was eleven years old when he remembered the name his mother used to despise.

 _Masayoshi Shido_.

He felt his empty loneliness twist into something sharper. Hatred bloomed in his stomach and spread until it was all that he knew. His eyes changed. Instead of eerie emptiness, they were bright with malevolence. Teachers stopped calling on him, children stopped bullying him. He created a bubble of isolation, and within that bubble he seethed.

On his twelfth birthday that no one remembered, Goro Akechi decided that he was going to kill this man.

Goro Akechi was thirteen when he discovered that if he pretended to be a certain way, people tended to give him what he wanted.

His grades suddenly skyrocketed. Teachers began to enjoy having him in his class. Adults praised him. Fellow students gave him snide looks and called him a teacher’s pet. Realizing he wasn’t very good at connecting with people his age, he decided to amend that.

He stood in front of a mirror for hours, practicing his smile. He learned how curl his lips upwards in a way that seemed genuine. He learned how to soften his eyes, to hide his hatred behind faux agreeability. He learned to tilt his head just so, in a way that made him seem interested in conversation. He refined his manners. He learned how to speak politely. He learned all the proper ways to address adults and his peers.

Social workers in charge of his case praised him on his new grades and attitude shift. Goro Akechi went into his fourteenth year with the skills of a conman. He was friendly; pleasant to be around. He chatted easily with his classmates and gave them help with assignments. In return, they let him use their smartphones, and Akechi started to research.

He learned that Masayoshi Shido was a politician, and a successful one at that. Many news sites projected him to be a future candidate for prime minister. Reading that made something boil in his chest, and for a moment his act slipped.

“Woah, Akechi-kun. Are you okay?” one of his ‘friends’ asked. The other boys sitting near them paused in whatever idiotic game they were playing to look at him.

Akechi gave him a smile. “I’m fine. Sorry about that. Thanks for letting me use your phone.”

Goro Akechi was fifteen years old when his hatred burst from his skin and manifested into something tangible.

Akechi tore through the Metaverse, clad in black, with Loki whispering in his ear.

One particularly irritating classmate driven insane later, and Akechi began to wonder exactly _how_ much damage he could cause with his newfound power.

He thought of the teacher who stalked the halls of his school. He thought of the way his eyes lingered on Akechi like he was a delectable piece of meat. Akechi found that he would not mind if this man ended up dead.

He wasn’t the only one.

Akechi had overheard girls complaining about it, saying that they felt uncomfortable in his class. He had even heard a few other male students say that they didn’t like the way the man stared at them.

So Akechi slipped into his Palace, put a gun to his Shadow’s skull, and pulled the trigger.

The teacher died the next day.

Akechi spent a few days in bed. The combination of triumph and disgust made him feel horribly nauseated. He felt something deep within his psyche shift.

The next time Akechi killed someone he was sixteen and it had been done under Shido’s orders.

He didn’t even flinch.

Goro Akechi was sixteen when he got his own apartment.

Shido had been paying him since he started working for him. He had gawked at the first check, certain that the man had missed a decimal point. Instead of spending it like most people his age would, Akechi was quick to deposit everything into a savings account. He had hoarded his earnings until he had enough money to rent a decent apartment and keep up with the payments.

He left the foster home and did not look back.

It was the nicest place he had ever lived in. For the first time in his life, Akechi had _luxury_.

He bought nice clothes that were in his size. He invested in hair products and cosmetics that were entirely unnecessary. He had his own _bed_. It was big too; large enough that two people could sleep in it comfortably.

Akechi had been overwhelmed.

When his seventeenth birthday rolled around, he bought himself a massive cake. He had no one to share it with, but he didn’t care. He ate and ate and ate and tried to ignore the way his eyes burned.

He should have had this with his mother. It was _Shido’s_ fault that he couldn’t. His hatred was bitter on his tongue. He could barely taste the sweetness of the cake.

Akechi fell asleep to dreams of slipping a knife into the man’s back.

The Phantom Thieves were a new and interesting problem that Akechi was planning to remove as soon as possible.

He had thought he was the only one with the ability to enter the Metaverse. If there were others and they truly _were_ fighting for justice, they could be a problem.

After all, Akechi’s justice only ever served himself.

Goro Akechi was seventeen when he first met Akira Kurusu.

Dark curly hair, gray eyes hidden behind glasses; his appearance was entirely unassuming. And yet, Akechi could see the way his eyes glinted with challenge.

“They’re necessary,” said Kurusu as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

A thrill shot down Akechi’s spine at the idea of competition. He wondered how difficult it would be to burn that easy confidence out of Kurusu’s eyes.

Robin Hood scratched at the inside of his skull. Akechi doubled over in agony as he finally let the new Persona burst free.

His outfit changed too; the black fading into white, red, and gold.

His façade built for others, manifested into a Persona of its own.

He wondered which version of himself was more real; Loki or Robin Hood?

The lines were so blurred he could no longer tell.

Akira Kurusu was the leader of the Phantom Thieves.

Akira Kurusu was the leader of the Phantom Thieves, and for the first time in his life, Akechi actively _wanted_ to kill someone other than Shido.

It kept bringing him back to Leblanc. The combination of burning revulsion and reluctant admiration he had for the man twisted into a bizarre hyper fixation that Akechi absolutely _refused_ to acknowledge.

He had watched Kurusu from a distance. He observed the way Kurusu easily pulled people into his orbit. People were inexplicably drawn toward him. Akechi had scoffed at first, but the more time they spent together, the more time Akechi felt himself sucked into Kurusu’s gravitational pull.

He was going to fucking kill him.

Despite this, Akechi found himself at Leblanc yet again, seated at his usual chair. Kurusu gave him a smile from where he worked behind the counter.

He wanted to put his fingers around that neck and squeeze until Kurusu stopped breathing entirely.

Robin Hood returned Kurusu’s smile with one of his own, while Loki seethed beneath his skin, waiting for the day he’d get to see the life drain from those gray eyes.

On Akechi’s eighteenth birthday, he played chess with Kurusu.

Kurusu made a surprisingly good move, and Akechi grudgingly moved his piece off the board.

“You’re not on your game today,” said Kurusu. “What’s up?”

Akechi felt himself being honest before his brain could catch up. He wondered if Kurusu had this effect on other people as well.

“It’s my birthday today.”

Kurusu paused. He looked up from the board and raised an eyebrow. “Oh really? Must be tough. You probably got mobbed by fangirls.”

Akechi shrugged. “My birthday isn’t public.”

Kurusu raised an eyebrow. “Huh. Who else knows, then?”

“Just you.”

“You’re serious?”

“I have no one else to tell.”

Akechi looked Kurusu in the eyes. He saw sympathy in there. It made rage fester in his chest. He didn’t need Kurusu’s _pity_.

“Happy birthday,” said Kurusu. There were no sorrys or condolences, just a genuine wish of goodwill. Akechi’s hatred faltered.

He blinked at Kurusu, who just laughed. “You’re not used to hearing that, are you?”

And just like that, the moment was gone.

Goro Akechi was eighteen when he joined the Phantom Thieves of Hearts.

He worked with them, he fought with them, but he was not one of them. They knew it, and he knew it. They skirted around him as though he was a ticking time bomb. He supposed that he was.

There was a moment though.

They were riding through Mementos, heading back to the surface after a long run. Sakamoto said something stupid. Sakura cracked a joke about it. Everyone laughed, and Akechi found himself laughing along with them.

There was a moment where he did not hate being a Phantom Thief.

It faded with their laughter. This wasn’t what he was meant to do.

Killing Kurusu should’ve felt like a victory.

It didn’t.

Goro Akechi was eighteen when he died staring at the barrel of his own gun.

He supposed that it was fitting, in a way. He hadn’t been planning on living much longer than he had, and he knew that his death would have been at his own hand.

Like mother like son.

At least this way his death could mean something.

He ignored the way the Phantom Thieves shouted his name; the way Kurusu banged his fists against the wall between them and _screamed_.

For the first time in his life, Akechi truly felt regret.

He didn’t get to feel it for very long.

**Author's Note:**

> I also think that Akechi is gay. Sometimes I lie awake thinking about him growing up in a world that didn't accept any part of him, not even his sexuality, and it makes me sad.  
> (But seriously he's fucking gay. Have you seen the way he dresses? His hair? That man is gay.)  
> 


End file.
